Tuesday 14 April 2009 07.15 EDT
First published on Tuesday 14 April 2009 07.15 EDT

An Iranian-American journalist has gone on trial behind closed doors in Iran for spying for the US, and a verdict is expected within two to three weeks, Iranian officials said today.

Roxana Saberi, a 31-year-old dual American-Iranian citizen, was arrested in late January and initially accused of working without press credentials.

In a case that threatens to complicate efforts to improve US-Iran ties, an Iranian investigative judge raised the stakes when he told state TV last week that Saberi had passed classified information to US intelligence services.

Under Iranian law espionage can carry the death penalty. Last year Iran executed an Iranian businessman convicted of spying on the military for Israel.

"The first trial meeting on Roxana Saberi was held yesterday … I think the verdict will be announced soon, perhaps in the next two or three weeks," said Alireza Jamshidi, a judiciary spokesman.

The US has said the charges against Saberi, who has reported for the BBC and America's National Public Radio (NPR), were "baseless and without foundation". The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, has expressed concern about the case and has called for Saberi's release.

Freedom House, a US human rights group, said last week the case was the latest in a string of attacks on press freedom in Iran. Jamshidi today rejected that accusation, saying: "Giving an opinion on a case, by an individual or a government, without being informed about the facts in it, is utterly ridiculous."

Saberi's parents, who live in Fargo, North Dakota, visited their daughter last week in Evin prison, north of Tehran, which is well known for holding political prisoners. The couple met Saberi for 30 minutes, for the first time since she called them in February to tell them of her arrest.

Her father, Iranian-born Reza Saberi, said he would stay in Iran until his daughter was freed. He has said his daughter was finishing a book on Iran and had planned to return to the US this year.

The case comes at a time when Barack Obama has made highly public overtures to Iran. The US severed diplomatic ties with Iran after the Islamic revolution in 1979 but Obama has offered to extend a hand of peace if Iran "unclenches its fist".

NPR said Saberi's press credentials were withdrawn more than a year ago but said she had continued to file short news stories, which the Iranian government tolerated. Saberi, a former Miss North Dakota beauty queen, originally went to Iran six years ago to complete a master's degree on Iranian studies and international relations.

Iran rarely arrests foreign journalists, but foreign nationals with Iranian parents who work as journalists are subject to extra scrutiny and are sometimes harassed. Her arrest is the latest in a series of detentions of Americans with Iranian backgrounds, apparently amid government fears that the US is trying to use them to foment a "velvet revolution".

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Iran has the world's sixth worst record for jailing journalists, and detained or investigated more than 30 in 2008.

In a separate case, an Iranian appeals court upheld a three-year prison sentence for an Iranian woman of Armenian descent who worked in Iran for the US-based International Research & Exchanges Board. Silva Harotonian was arrested in June and sentenced in January. The US has called on Iran to release Harotonian and said her conviction on charges of trying to overthrow the Iranian government were baseless. Her employer and family said she was an administrative assistant, not a political activist.